Winter heat wave

"By winter standards this is really a kind of heat wave, if it had been summer now we would have had temperatures around 40 degrees," said Maurice Middendorp of Buienradar. "These temperatures really just belong in May or June."

And it didn't just happen in the Netherlands. It even reached 19 degrees in Poland and 19.6 in the Czech Republic. Denmark, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia also recorded temperature records. In Germany, it was 12 degrees warmer than normal.

Potential impacts on agriculture

"High temperatures will have a direct relationship with the expected amount of insects in the coming period" says Agrometeorologist Joost Nieveen of SmartFarm. Therefore, it is interesting to leave the FieldMate in your field even during the winter months when there is no crop. By recording soil and air temperatures, we can begin to predict when the first flight of insects will occur and help you with targeted scouting and control.